Well that went south in a hurry. Last week at this time, I was foolishly wondering if the Bulls had a master plan. They actually added draft capital (two second round picks) for basically doing nothing but cutting a player they weren't using. Because I was clearly suffering from temporary insanity, it made me forget that the team I love has the absolute worst owner in all of the big four professional sports and therefore hires/directs the worst front office in the NBA.
Actual photo of the Bulls new starting center... I guess.
I'll deal with the ownership at another time (there is only so much rage I can spew in one sitting) but now that Nick Harrison, the architect of the worst trade in the history of professional sports, has been banished from the Dallas Mavericks, the NBA, and perhaps the planet, I challenge you to find a worse front office that that of the Chicago Bulls. I'll wait...
Never mind. You won't find a worse front office so I'll move on. It actually started out promising 6 years ago. The Bulls newly hired president, Artūras Karnišovas actually seemed to have a plan (I'm not even going to mention the GM by name as he clearly does nothing and AK is the one pulling all the strings). He made a trade to bring in a 29 year old two time all-star center in Nikola Vucevic. Then he did the unthinkable and got three highly sought after free agents , Demar Derozan, Lonzo Ball and Alex Caruso to join the Bulls. They actually looked good... until Lonzo Ball suffered a meniscus tear that resulted in the longest rehab from a routine injury ever (about three years and counting). After that, the Bulls clearly had no back up plan... or just any plan. As the great philosopher Mike Tyson said, "Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face".
Since that time over five years ago the Bulls have done two things wright, and about 1 million things wrong. Drafting Mata Buzelis and Ayo Dosunmu were great moves. But of course the Bulls corrected that by trading Dosunmu for nothing this week. I could go back five years and rattle off every stupid thing they have done, but I don't even need to. I can prove the Bulls front office is the worst in the NBA by just looking at the past seven days.
Every Bulls fan for the next ten years... if they still have fans that is.
As I mentioned early, those seven days started out promising with the Bulls making a move to acquire two 2nd round draft picks in exchange for paying a guy, Jevon Carter, about $2 million to not play for them (because he sucked and they made a huge mistake signing him to begin with). But then, we entered bizarro world and literally no other moves made any sense at all. With each one, fans scrathced their head and said, 'This has to be setting up a later move. Otherwise this makes no sense". And then 2 PM rolled around. The trade deadline ended with every Bulls fan (those who are still left) saying "What the Fuck?"
I have been a huge sports fan for over 50 years and I have never seen anything like this mess. Going into the trade deadline the Bulls only owned their own first round draft picks and a protected one from Portland. They only had one young starting caliber big and they had a log jam at the guard position. After the trade deadline, they had one young starting caliber big, they had their 1st round draft picks, and a log jam at guard.
When you look at that, one would logically think, "Oh the Bulls didn't make any more trades". WRONG! They made at least 5 deals and have NOTHING to show for it... except NINE 2nd round picks. Basketball is not like the other sports. A 2nd round pick in the NBA is basically worthless. Every once in a while you find a gem, but that is very rare. The Bulls will most likely sell all of these picks for $3 million each to individual teams who are so good that they need a cheap way to fill out the end of their roster. Sadly, money can't play center. Neither can the fourteen 2nd round picks the Bulls now own.
The Bulls with their 2nd round picks.
Another thing to keep in mind is that expiring contracts are incredibly valuable to every other team in the league except for the Bulls. Most teams crave them in order to free up space to sign good players (because their front office can do that). In many case, teams get first round picks just for taking on a salary. But of course the Bulls didn't do that. The Bulls had SEVEN expiring contracts on their roster and they turned them into... let me check my notes... exactly ZERO 1st round picks.
So let's look at what actually came in and out during the worst week in Bulls history since they told Michael Jordan to hit the bricks because "Organizations win championships... not players." (actual quote).
Mercifully sent to a team that knows what the fuck they are doing:
Poor guys who came to the team with the worst front office in the NBA
Three of those players will mostly still be on the team next year. Perhaps they sign Ivey as a RFA. The rest will all walk for nothing.
What the fuck?!
Management should have made trade moves with other teams to buy out those toxic contracts, acquire more draft picks (first-round picks if possible), and then cut them. Instead, they practically gave away their assets for nothing. It's a terrible job, truly unbelievable. Now all that's left is to lose games trying to get the highest draft pick possible, and we don't know how long this rebuilding process will last.
They're incompetent. Now all that's left is to have faith in those who can't make a decent trade, a coin toss. All that remains is the memory of what was once a winning team.
Honestly, I don't know whether to call the Bulls' front office incompetent or if they simply don't want to build a competitive team. The second-round picks are fine, but not getting a first-round pick is unbelievable. They started with high hopes for the future and ended up with nothing. Now they're stuck losing to get high draft picks.
I don't know if they could have purposely done worse then they did.
I think they could have done worse; now we just have to see what they get with those second-round picks and, well, in the free agent market (although it must be difficult to choose a team that will obviously have some bad seasons).
This feels similar to how we felt about the Lions front office just a decade or so ago.
Yep. And I fear that is how long I'll have to wait for the Bulls to matter.
The Bulls' management is simply terrible, to put it mildly. They made the last trades for practically nothing, like trading Vucevic for a younger but more expensive player 😱😱🫣🫣 instead of looking for a better trade for the team's benefit, for example, two or three players with potential, and why not a first-round draft pick, not now but with the future in mind. The only really bad thing is that with this management, there's no chance of improvement whatsoever.
Yep. They are going to be terrible for a long time... again.
Let's hope not, my friend, but all signs indicate that terrible seasons are coming, as you say, in the next few years until they can find some talented youngsters.
Watching the Bulls front office operate is like watching a car crash where the driver keeps insisting everything is fine.
Your analysis of the shortsightedness of the Chicago Bulls front office really struck a chord with me. The series of inconsistent decisions they have made over the past seven days is truly disappointing. I don't think they have a clear plan, especially when it comes to draft picks and roster management.